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Today, The Mozilla Foundation released Firefox 29.0, the first full release of the browser based on the new Australis “user experience.” Featuring a new toolbar layout, an updated version of the Firefox Sync cloud synchronization service, and a host of other incremental adjustments, the latest Firefox feels a lot different—though to people who have used Google’s Chrome, it may look strangely familiar.

Users of Firefox’s Nightly beta build first got a look at the new interface last November when it was released as part of the early build of Firefox 28. Australis is focused on making the browser's toolbar interface as customizable as possible, allowing users to show as much or as little “chrome” as they want above the displayed page. It takes several visual cues from the design of Chrome, (or to be more accurate, it took them back from Chrome, which borrowed from the early Australis implementations) including the “hamburger” menu button in the browser’s menu pane, but it implements the features behind those design elements in a way that's unique to Firefox.

Starting from the very top, the first thing most veteran Firefox users will notice is the change in the shape of the tabs—they’re no longer squared off. They now sport rounded edges and curve, file folder-like, into the frame of the displayed webpage. Unhighlighted tabs are displayed without a “top,” appearing just as blocks of text separated by fading vertical lines.

Out with the old, boxy look...

And in with the new, rounder, friendlier one.

There are even more cosmetic changes in what Mozilla refers to as the “Awesome Bar”—the merged navigation and toolbar. You can populate the tool pane to the right of the address bar with the features you use most and leave others in the pop-up menu box exposed by clicking on the three-bar “hamburger” icon.

One of the features in that collection is the Firefox Sync service. Sync has been updated for Firefox 29—instead of using a set of activation codes to connect the Firefox browsers on your tablet and smartphone to the bookmark and setting synchronization service, Sync now lets you log in with a Firefox account associated with an email address. You can now also sync browsers running on separate computers so that history and bookmarks follow you from one PC to another.

Enlarge/ The Firefox 27 startup tour introduces the new "intuitive menu," launched from the three-bar hamburger icon. Almost everything in it is open to customization.

By clicking the “customize” button in the menu box, you can now tweak what shows up in the toolbar and hide or show the browser’s title bar, bookmarks bar, and (on Windows and Linux) the pull-down menus bar. You can also add or remove features from the menu box and address bar—including yanking the now extraneous Google search box.

Enlarge/ Drag, drop, hide or show—the customization screen of Firefox 29 lets you put what you use most in the toolbar and get the rest out of the way.

There are a few pieces of Firefox 29 that may take a little bit of digging by users to take advantage of. One of those is the new social sharing feature of the Firefox SocialAPI. When it was introduced last year, SocialAPI made it possible to run services like Facebook Messenger and news feeds such as Cliqz in a browser sidebar. With the latest Firefox release, that functionality has been extended to one-click social sharing for Facebook and the del.icio.us social tagging site, among others, driven by integrated web services.

Enlarge/ Eight of the SocialAPI-based services that can now be integrated into Firefox.

Enlarge/ Click on the "activate now" link on Firefox's SocialAPI page for Facebook, and Firefox prompts you to enable the link-sharing service. It can then be launched from a paper airplane icon on the toolbar or in the menu.

The problem is that these services aren’t yet directly exposed as options through Firefox’s menus or its “add-ons” directory. Currently, they’re published on a webpage that allows you to subscribe to the services, and some of the services (such as Del.icio.us) provide links to the service streams from their own sites.

Update: Some readers have noted that Firefox 29 is in many ways less customizable because of the way it's shaved away parts in the interest of a simpler interface. The add-on bar, for example, is gone. But that's because the add-on bar is now part of the tool pane. Other features, such as putting the tabs on the bottom, can be restored by using the Classic Theme Restorer Add-On.

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Sean Gallagher
Sean is Ars Technica's IT and National Security Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. Emailsean.gallagher@arstechnica.com//Twitter@thepacketrat

I've been using Firefox since version 1, and it seems to be LESS customizable than before. Alot of stuff has disappeared. I use the Nautipolis theme, but some stuff doesn't work right. Classic Theme restorer seemed to cause issues with that theme. I'm trying to use it without the restorer, but you can't move some things around like the back/forward buttons. The refresh/stop is a tiny thing at the far end of the URL bar. The activity throbber is gone (I have an add-on to hide tabs unless there are more than 1.)

Ugh, it looks like it waste a lot of space with all that green surrounding the window…

That's not Firefox, it's Windows. You can reduce the padding amount if you wish.

Yes, I just realized that! I downloaded the Mac version and it looks better, imho.

I actually find it strange that Windows has used such excessive (IMHO) border padding since Vista and forward. It's one of the first things I change on a new install. Most people don't seem to mind though. Different tastes I suppose...

Gotta wonder how "Committed to you, your privacy and an open Web" can be reconciled with the inclusion of features specifically designed to let social networking sites have more control of your browser (the "SocialAPI")?

I like it for the most part. It seems somewhat more visually refined. I don't like that they removed the add-on bar though; all my extensions take up a lot of screen real estate. Thankfully there's, well, a add-on for that. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... addon-bar/

LOCKED: Back/Forward/Urlbar/Stop/Reload locked into group on the Navigator toolbar New Menu button locked onto end of Navigator toolbar All tabs button locked onto end of Tabs toolbar Cut / Copy / Paste locked into movable group Tabs toolbar locked on top and always visible Navigator toolbar locked as always visible

I like it, and I'm so tired of chrome, the only reason I didn't made the jump was because I have to keep 4 computers in sync (bookmarks) and using a third party service was not as good as the experience with chrome, being able to use now a mozilla account, this makes it for me, I'm moving back to firefox.

Ugh, it looks like it waste a lot of space with all that green surrounding the window…

That's not Firefox, it's Windows. You can reduce the padding amount if you wish.

Yes, I just realized that! I downloaded the Mac version and it looks better, imho.

I actually find it strange that Windows has used such excessive (IMHO) border padding since Vista and forward. It's one of the first things I change on a new install. Most people don't seem to mind though. Different tastes I suppose...

The thicker window borders were introduced in Vista to make manipulating windows with touch controls easier. And the transparency introduced at the same time was supposed to offset that somewhat by making the thicker borders less prominent.

LOCKED: Back/Forward/Urlbar/Stop/Reload locked into group on the Navigator toolbar New Menu button locked onto end of Navigator toolbar All tabs button locked onto end of Tabs toolbar Cut / Copy / Paste locked into movable group Tabs toolbar locked on top and always visible Navigator toolbar locked as always visible

Installing "Classic Theme Restorer" brings back pretty much all of these, for the record. You can even move the button into the title bar and get rid of the navigation bar. (Pentadactyl user here, so I'm used to not having the nav bar)

I've been quite enjoying this update. The customisable menu is brilliant, I especially like how everything can be either an icon on bar or tucked away in the menu (or hidden completely). My only criticism so far is how some icons are grouped but can't be ungrouped, like the star & bookmarks buttons. I expect add on devs are already on the case

LOCKED: Back/Forward/Urlbar/Stop/Reload locked into group on the Navigator toolbar New Menu button locked onto end of Navigator toolbar All tabs button locked onto end of Tabs toolbar Cut / Copy / Paste locked into movable group Tabs toolbar locked on top and always visible Navigator toolbar locked as always visible

Installing "Classic Theme Restorer" brings back pretty much all of these, for the record. You can even move the button into the title bar and get rid of the navigation bar. (Pentadactyl user here, so I'm used to not having the nav bar)

Of course the Classic Theme Restorer, as great as it is, doesn't account for every single problem that will arise, and it certainly doesn't behave well with other extensions that affect the same things...

I get what you're saying, but what I'm saying is Firefox is less customizable, because you need to install extensions to RESTORE functionality that was there already.

This will only make Mozilla keep losing market share like they have been losing for the past year. Steadily and surely...

What a bunch of idiots...

Granted, I certainly won't leave, cause Firefox is still head and shoulders above the rest, hands down.

You can now also sync browsers running on separate computers so that history and bookmarks follow you from one PC to another.

You could do that before.

Yes, but now all you need is your Mozilla account and you can access it anywhere. As can anyone who compromises that account, of course, since they now no longer need physical access to one of your existing devices to pair with your main device first.

HUGE step back for a company advertising as "Committed to you, your privacy and an open Web" (as seen in the first image).

I actually find it strange that Windows has used such excessive (IMHO) border padding since Vista and forward. It's one of the first things I change on a new install. Most people don't seem to mind though. Different tastes I suppose...

The thicker window borders were introduced in Vista to make manipulating windows with touch controls easier. And the transparency introduced at the same time was supposed to offset that somewhat by making the thicker borders less prominent.

That makes sense. Most people who used Vista/7 used it without touch controls though, so I'm a bit surprised that not more people have been bothered by it. Not a huge thing I suppose... (well, the borders are huge, but... )

I'm not finding it much of a change. I browsed Firefox before this update.

This. Past many versions the look of Firefox was pretty much the same. Some pretty minor UI tweaks that make little difference one way or the other. Yes of course there are changes under the hood. I understand that (in before some pedant points that out....)

I saw notice of the update this morning before work, and was rather surprised by the magnitude of the changes. I haven't been paying any attention to betas, so I didn't know about Australis. And personally, I don't like it. I didn't have time to do any testing, but I did a quick search and found that apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way. There's already an add-on called Classic Theme Restorer that supposedly puts things back more or less they way they were. Has anyone tried it yet?

Edit: I see a number of other people mentioned Classic Theme Restorer while I was typing. Damn fat old fingers. I'd still be interested in thoughts about how it works, aside from what someone already mentioned about it not playing well with other add-ons that attempt to modify the same UI elements.

Ugh, it looks like it waste a lot of space with all that green surrounding the window…

That's not Firefox, it's Windows. You can reduce the padding amount if you wish.

Yes, I just realized that! I downloaded the Mac version and it looks better, imho.

I actually find it strange that Windows has used such excessive (IMHO) border padding since Vista and forward. It's one of the first things I change on a new install. Most people don't seem to mind though. Different tastes I suppose...

Yeah, me too. I love how OS X has no border at all. What do you need the border for? It's perfectly clear from the drop shadow where the window edge is.

Thunderbird was also updated today, to 24.5.0 (on the release channel). Some of the same changes, but not as pronounced and, apparently, not as deep. Which is good. Thunderbird's menu bar and toolbar remain where they were, and are as customizable as they were previously - which they've now effed up in Firefox, in my opinion. I find it less customizable, not more. The stuff under the burger buns is crap now, relative to your overall layout and what could be done previously. They ripped out too much.